Beneath the Gated Sky

by Robert Reed

“What cuffs?”

  Moments ago, on a signal, the bond around their wrists had dissolved, leaving nothing but the strong aroma of plastic and a ghostly pressure, Cornell and Porsche lifting their arms in the same motion, as if they were still lashed tightly together.

  Everyone was ordered out into the rain, then told to stand in the open, masked faces pointed into the wind and their least favorite hands extended, palms up. Latrobe had positioned himself beside Porsche, and when the checkpoint’s soldiers appeared, armed and swaggering, he placed his right hand firmly on the back of her head—a gesture of ownership, everyone warned that this big woman was his mistress.

  She obeyed instructions, trying to act the part by tilting her head toward him; but beneath her mask, she allowed herself a tight, bitter grimace.

  The ranking officer paused before them. Shouting over the rain, he asked, “How was the hunting?”

  “Excellent,” Latrobe replied.

  A second officer held a needle-tipped probe, and with the crisp brutality of someone who did little else, she jabbed the needle into Porsche’s upturned palm, drawing a million times more blood and tissue than required by the mandatory test.

  In moments, Porsche’s genetic material was examined, then matched against existing files.

  Trinidad must have used Few techniques to build false identities. After that, it was a simple trick to alter the City’s records, making files to match each member of the team. No one would doubt the sequencing of base pairs; certainly not the bored guards working in the midst of a terrific rainstorm.

  “How many do you claim taken?” asked the first officer.

  “Forty-three,” Latrobe answered, with a tangible, well-practiced pride. He handed over a digital record of the fire-fights, adding, “We also have a prisoner for you.”

  That brought a surge of interest. The officer straightened, declaring, “It was a good hunt.”

  Porsche shook her sore hand.

  “I see why you brought so many.” Envy sharpened the officer’s voice. His slick mask focused on Porsche for a moment. “A little vacation for the battle worn, is it?”

  “With plenty of bounty money to spend,” Latrobe replied.

  “Show us what you have,” the officer said, the demand wrapped in a false amiability. Then, “Come with us.”

  The officer was speaking to Porsche.

  Glancing at a manifest displayed in a corner of his mask, he called her by her new name. “Po-lee-een,” he said. “Keep me company, if you please.”

  Trinidad would have chosen the name.

  He must have thought that Po-lee-een was too ordinary of a name to raise suspicions, if any suspicions remained. And the easy irony was too hard to resist.

  Latrobe and the officer were walking together, Porsche remaining a half-step behind her supposed lover. She forced herself not to look back at Cornell. What mattered was playing this role to her best. Nothing was finished, nothing decided. Then she noticed Trinidad standing at attention like everyone else, his palm extended patiently, and she walked past him without looking toward his face, without even whispering the incandescent insults that kept swirling through her head.

  The convoy’s lead vehicle had its large doors propped open, seemingly for them. The trio climbed inside, into the room-sized cavity and out of the rain.

  Porsche saw an armored box meant to hold munitions. Strapped to the top of the box—by his arms and legs—was a long and relatively frail jarrtee man, estivating on the brink of death.

  She would recognize Timothy Kleck on any world.

  The officer pulled off the blanket, examining the insignia that covered the narrow white chest, then fingered the gouged neck, and finally, he pried open both of the blind, old-fashioned eyes.

  “A convert,” was his verdict.

  “But he has some rank,” said Latrobe. “You’ll see.”

  Stepping back, the officer quoted a modest sum, adding, “With more coming, if the judges’ council upholds your claims.”

  Latrobe straightened his back. “That seems weak,” he muttered. Then he added, “Sir,” with a careful low voice.

  The officer was accustomed to complaints. With a calm irritability, he said, “I see a hundred prisoners every day. Most haven’t belonged to the Order for a single year. Maybe one prisoner, if that, reveals anything of substance under interrogation.” He was speaking to Latrobe but watching Porsche instead. “Either way, I can’t authorize any larger payment. You know the policy. As soon as the City has measured this man’s worth—”

  “How soon?” Latrobe interrupted.

  “Not very. I understand that they’re backed up in security. Tomorrow morning is the soonest—”

  “We never had this shit at the southern checkpoints,” Latrobe spat. “Payment was quick and fair, always.”

  “I don’t know how others work,” the officer replied, immune to criticism.

  “You’re going to hold part of our bounty in your own tentacles, aren’t you?”

  The officer ignored him, approaching Porsche instead. “Do you think that I’m an unreasonable man?”

  Was this a test?

  “I am taking responsibility for this prisoner,” he continued, “and that means that I accrue certain risks. What if he is innocent? I’m not claiming that’s true. I don’t know what’s true. I’ve dealt with your group once or twice, and you play fair. But frankly, some of our irregulars have been known to kidnap good citizens, polish their skin clean, then decorate them to look like generals in the Order.”

  “I have soldiers to pay,” Latrobe snarled. “For doing vital work under the sun, in the most miserable conditions imaginable.”

  The officer continued to ignore him.

  Standing an arm’s length from Porsche, he said, “You didn’t answer me, Po-lee-een. Am I unreasonable?”

  The man was testing her, but only for the most prosaic reasons. If she sided with him, then he would surely try to purchase her services from Latrobe. But why was Latrobe trying to piss him off? She thought for a moment, then understood. And to play along with the charade, she brought her mask close to the officer’s mask, then said, “No, you aren’t unreasonable. For being a cowardly pouch-fucked asshole.”

  The man’s mask hid his features, but not his emotions.

  He tried to stand taller, then gave a shrill command. “Take this prisoner!” he cried out.

  Soldiers scrambled into the vehicle, moving fast.

  Timothy was untied and carried carelessly by two soldiers. A third man held a computer in one hand, asking, “What is the prisoner’s status, sir?”

  The officer glanced at Latrobe, then Porsche.

  “Suspected traitor,” he replied. “Lowest priority.”

  In other words, Timothy would languish in a holding cell for a very long while, giving Latrobe and the others time to vanish.

  “Weapons and munitions!” the officer shouted. “Surrender them, please! If you want your vacation now, I’d be advised that you hurry!”

  They were disarmed, which had been expected: The City didn’t relish the idea of armed irregulars roaming its streets, night or day. Timothy’s stiff, immobile body was carried off into the rain, looking more like a sculpture than living tissue. Porsche found herself sitting in the car once again, cuffed to Cornell and moving into the City. Neither spoke, but with their masks removed, their black mood was obvious.

  “Poor Mr. Kleck,” Latrobe offered. “He awakens after dusk to find himself alone, trapped in a holding cell, inside an alien body, probably slated for a postmidnight interrogation.”

  Cornell was making fists, then squeezing, expending so much effort that his forearms trembled.

  “It should be an interesting race,” Latrobe continued. “Your friend isn’t much of a talent, I would think. Insanity is guaranteed. But does he lose his sanity before the interrogators insert their electrodes and pump serums into his strange blood? Or is it the torture that pushes him off that cliff?”

  Porsche didn’t make
fists or tremble with rage.

  A strange calmness grew within her. Emotions were a currency, and she had none to spare.

  In mutilated English, Cornell muttered, “Cruel.” Then, “You.” And finally, “Fuck.”

  Latrobe laughed amiably, patting him on the shoulder. “But I’m not the one who promised his safety. Am I?”

  One driver giggled.

  Otherwise, no one made a sound.

  The spaceport passed on their right, the control tower surrounded by military vehicles, glistening ceramic runways stretching off into infinity, and one of the skeletal gantries calmly absorbing a titanic blue-white bolt of lightning.

  Later, the convoy turned into an obscure alleyway, then pulled to a stop. Inside a long granite warehouse was a jumble of scrap machinery, and hidden inside a scrap tokamak were fresh weapons, rip-guns, and more powerful wonders wrapped tight inside electronic camouflage and simple oiled skins.

  The weapons were handed out with a Christmas atmosphere.

  A familiar figure appeared, rapping on the window glass with his knuckles, then climbing into the back with Latrobe.

  Trinidad removed his mask, giving a half wink. “Good work at the checkpoint.”

  If anything, Porsche’s calmness grew.

  Latrobe asked, “Should you be here?”

  “If things get complicated, I’ll leave.” Trinidad leaned back in the padded seat, saying, “No one suspects anything. Our route is clear. And our contact is already waiting. Eagerly waiting. And do you want to know how sweet our luck is? This is the last storm until dusk. Until we need it, the bad weather stays away.”

  The convoy was moving again, accelerating along a wide, otherwise empty avenue, the float mechanisms sending up geysers of gray rainwater.

  Because he couldn’t resist, Trinidad leaned forward, asking, “How does it feel to be back? Bittersweet?”

  She said nothing.

  “There aren’t many changes that you can see. Even in the midst of civil war, jarrtees like to keep everything just so.” Trinidad moved closer to Cornell, suspecting a better audience. “Look at that open field. Do you see it? That used to be a large, thriving neighborhood. But the Order sabotaged a shuttle, and that’s where it impacted. Fully fueled, and the blast incinerated nearly nine thousand.”

  Porsche stared through the faltering rain, imagining the disaster.

  Or maybe it had always been a field, and Trinidad was lying for no reason except that he could.

  “I like the Order,” he continued. “I know it’s not the proper attitude for a member of the Few. All species are beautiful, but particularly those who are very kind and very dull.”

  In a tight, angry voice, Cornell asked, “Why are you talking to me?”

  “Who says I am?” Trinidad leaned back again. “What I want to see is Jarrtee in another thousand years. I want to see who wins, and what’s left. My vote goes toward the Order, though I don’t think it’ll be in charge. Something more placid, less daring, will grow out of it. But isn’t that the way of rebellions? Like the United States. Conceived in a wave of idealism and latent power. Its pinnacle came in the last century, and since then…what? A long relentless decline, as inevitable as the need to piss three times in the night. Am I right?”

  Latrobe responded. “When we bring out these scientists, everything changes.”

  “It will, it will,” Trinidad sang.

  The convoy was racing along the stone avenue, geysers flanking each vehicle.

  Calmly, but with a whiff of bile at the edge of her voice, Porsche tried changing the topic.

  “Just so I know,” she said, “where is this meeting going to be held?”

  Trinidad leaned forward again, close enough to taste her ear hole.

  “You know where,” he warned. “He’s a romantic, and he needs privacy. A building left empty by day, and one with a strong sentimental hold—”

  “The school,” she muttered to herself.

  “More precisely, the school’s courtyard.” Trinidad chuckled, saying, “You’ll know exactly where to look for him, I think.”

  Porsche said nothing.

  Her cousin leaned back and closed his eyes, laughing for a few moments. “Jey-im has been waiting in the rain for you. Where the terrors once built their nests. He looks so lovesick, Po-lee-een. So paranoid. So earnest.”

  “We should have dressed you up in drag,” said Latrobe, his voice perfectly serious. “You could have fooled him, I bet. And we wouldn’t have had to bother with her.”

  “Except the poets on a million worlds are wrong,” Trinidad countered. “Love is a lot of things, but it’s never, ever blind.”

  10

  Porsche didn’t recognize the old fortification at a glance.

  In memory, her former school was a place of darkness and simple pleasures wrapped within a child’s perspective. But sitting inside the armored car, in daylight, the granite walls had an astonishing pinkness, the stainless-steel gates shone with a rapacious brilliance as the sun broke through the dying storm clouds, and there was something exceptionally bleak about the high smooth walls and the relentless lack of windows—not a jarrtee way of thinking, but it was hers.

  “The west gate,” said Trinidad, eyes closed in order to concentrate on a flood of data. “There’s a small access door on the left. Unlocked. From there, I think you can find your way.”

  It was Latrobe who wished her “Good luck.”

  Porsche gave a little snort.

  The cuffs dissolved again. Cornell lifted his freed arm, laid his hand across the back of her head, then turned her head, and with a forced calmness, he said, “Whatever happens…” and let his voice trail away, the last words left implied: “I love you.”

  A muddy rage was building. Porsche opened her mouth and said nothing, then took a deep breath and kissed him on the mouth—too lightly and too quickly—then removed his grasping hand and slowly, as if drugged, set the mask over her face once again.

  The others donned their masks.

  The overhead door opened with a screech, raw sunshine flowing into the cabin, buoying her up like water and depositing her on the flat wet paving stones outside; a mirror screech closed the door, and with a thin hiss, the car moved off to hide.

  A firm shove opened the door, and it drifted shut once Porsche was inside.

  She lifted her mask and quietly called out, “Hello.”

  The echo had a sharpness and an impatience, moving faster than any earthly echo, racing to the end of the ancient hallway and dashing back again, sounding like a stranger’s voice, then taking a second lap, fading away in the end like a jarrtee question mark.

  “Hello?” the building asked Porsche.

  She walked on quiet feet, eyes adapting quickly to the gloom. Chill phosphorescent strips marked each classroom, and brighter strips illuminated doorways leading to the subbasements and the courtyard—escape routes for war and for earthquakes, respectively. Memories rose up from everywhere, yet nothing was where the mind expected it. She had always remembered how the floor was covered with tiny tiles—black-and-white; square and triangular—linked together to form seashells. But she had told Cornell that they looked like conch shells, which wasn’t true. Pausing in front of the first familiar classroom, she stared at the floor, knowing that she had walked here barefoot hundreds and thousands of times. Yet instead of the expected ornate shell, she saw something relatively smooth, and simple, and worn. The remembered flourishes and much of its beauty had, it seemed, been conjured up by her homesick mind.

  Above the room’s locked door was a sloppy banner made of simple silk. Children had painted the big letters with the luminescent guts of nightflies. Their teacher must have given them specific instructions, but exuberance had won out. Each letter struggled to be larger and brighter than its neighbors. Dribbles and random flowers lent character. Porsche stared at the banner for an instant, struggling to read the City’s dialect. And it didn’t help that the flies’ guts were tired of seeping light. Stepp
ing closer, she consciously pulled her head to the right—to the beginning—and digested the words carefully, with the sturdy pace of a less-than-bright child.

  “TO THE CITY, LOVE,” she read, “TO THE ORDER OF FIRE, DEATH.”

  Porsche read the words a second time, just to be certain, then turned and began walking again, feeling someone or something urging her to hurry.

  The building, perhaps.

  Or more likely, Trinidad.

  More banners dangled from the ceiling and above the doors, every class involved in the propaganda.

  “THE ORDER WILL NOT STEAL OUR SOULS!” she read aloud, in a whisper.

  Silently, she read, COOK THE INVADERS IN THEIR NESTS!

  And over the door leading to the courtyard, she learned:

  THE ORDER HIDES AMONG US: TRUST YOUR FRIENDS, BUT ONLY WITH YOUR SUSPICION!

  Razored strips of sunlight slipped around the ancient aluminum door. Porsche secured her mask and shoved at the door, a staggering white-hot fire engulfing her. Squinting, she pushed against the light, navigating past the blurred outlines of twanya trees and leathery colo trees and a rank stand of black-black felt grass that roared at her with thousands of insect voices.

  The jungle seemed shorter than before, and more impenetrable. She took one muddy path and found it blocked by a twisted mass of downed timber. The second path wandered off in the wrong direction entirely. Finally, she returned to the first path, obeying her instincts. Clever children had excavated a tunnel through the stack of rotting timber—a passage too small for adults. Porsche climbed instead, ignoring the masses of stinging vines and the nameless diurnal bloodsuckers, reaching the soft summit and finding a familiar face gazing up at her with a mixture of fury and surprise.

  The terror was the size of a medium dog, and infinitely more menacing.

  It wailed up at her with a piercing, chilling voice, its massive jaws opening like a rattlesnake’s jaws, exposing the beautiful red flesh inside the long mouth, its long serrated canines shining like steel.

  Porsche screamed back at it, lifting her arms high, trying to make herself look enormous, and fearless.